I was reading in an interview with War Witch, the gal who runs City of Heroes whose name I cannot recall right now, that they don't intend to add weather effects to CoX.
Her reasoning was something of a baffler. She said that, to her, "because it's cool" is not sufficient reason to add something to the game. "Not on my watch," she said. If they added weather effects she'd want them to change the game dynamics in some way, would want them to serve a function.
This got me thinking. Is "because it's cool" a sufficient reason to put something in a game? What are your thoughts?
I believe her point was that it needed to add something to the game other then a scenery effect. If any game is going to commit X amount of resources to making something, especially a new system, they need to know its going to have a payoff/payback for them. No company is going to spend $50,000.00 to make back only $25,000.00. That's just bad business. Sometimes the cost of "cool" is too high when compared to what they can expect to get back for doing it.
it has to be a judgement call by the devs on each thing.
if they can add something cool that takes a few days work then why not. if its cool but takes a month of solid devs time just so we get something people wont use or see that much of then no probably not.
but in general im for cool things. sector space revamp in a way is nothing more than 'cool'. it does nothing to the game but every single person wants it, and has so far loved in on tribble. that was totally worth it because it improves the game, even though its nothing more than a visual improvement.
Please. The Rule of Cool justifies anything. Yes, it's nice to have things make an impact on the game, but most game exist simply because of the Rule of Cool; that one thought, "Wouldn't it be awesome if..."
To say "We're not adding things just because they're cool" means you're not adding things like new costumes or badges, because they make no impact on gameplay. They might as well tell the truth; that they don't want to spend the time, money and effort working on something like that, not that they don't want cool stuff.
(On a side note, CoX would be very cool with weather related buffs/debuffs. Like, a flight speed debuff in high winds, or a ranged accuracy effect in the rain. Things like that.)
I was reading in an interview with War Witch, the gal who runs City of Heroes whose name I cannot recall right now, that they don't intend to add weather effects to CoX.
Her reasoning was something of a baffler. She said that, to her, "because it's cool" is not sufficient reason to add something to the game. "Not on my watch," she said. If they added weather effects she'd want them to change the game dynamics in some way, would want them to serve a function.
This got me thinking. Is "because it's cool" a sufficient reason to put something in a game? What are your thoughts?
To me it really depends. Theres always the asthetic purpose for anything. Like the Imperial Class. I don't like it, but I see it more and more these days. The sole purpose of it being there is "because it's cool"
I think new mechanics should take priority over the things that are just cool though.
Personally, I think you can prioritize coolness versus functionality but there are definitely functional improvements so minor that you'd have gotten a better response out of something cool.
You also have to consider the implementations of the engine.
CoH was traditionally a resource hog and it's big selling point these days is that it's an open, persistent world with low system requirements. So it's based around functionality and social interaction, to the expense of coolness. Which, frankly, Warcraft is the epitome of; it will run to close to the full extent of its beauty on any system and is an open world game.
Part of the reason a game like STO is sharded is because they decided to base it around coolness. Wouldn't it be cool if everyone had four pets? Wouldn't it be cool if we had fancy lighting effects?
The Cryptic hallmark is doing things because they're cool. There are two overriding questions behind everything Cryptic does: Is it fun? Is it cool? They'll tend to throw anything else on the backburner to satisfy these two points and their updates are generally based around these two points, which is why they're working on their fifth casual online game now and have never fostered a complete raiding climate. Champions is the closest they got to that... and it's simultaneously not enough of a raiding game for the hardcores and Cryptic's least popular game (I know some people who wouldn't play it because it had too much meaningful loot/gear progression for them).
Paragon seems to subscribe more to the Blizzard model of basing the game on interaction and functionality... and then you have companies further in that direction like CCP who have games that are almost completely functionality.
Function is important but I'd honestly sacrifice raiding and 1v1 PvP balance for more costumes, weekly missions, etc.
I believe her point was that it needed to add something to the game other then a scenery effect. If any game is going to commit X amount of resources to making something, especially a new system, they need to know its going to have a payoff/payback for them. No company is going to spend $50,000.00 to make back only $25,000.00. That's just bad business. Sometimes the cost of "cool" is too high when compared to what they can expect to get back for doing it.
Back in the day that wasn't the issue at all, Melissa Bianco has had this stance for years now concerning weather in CoX. Back when they began doing the zone revisions to places like "Faultline" she was asked about adding in weather effects then. She said it was easy enough to do, but she personally thought if it was going to be in-game it should have an effect on gamplay, like bad weather making flight more difficult and so on.
The funny thing is they've recently released Going Rogue that updated the visual look to the game for no perceivable gameplay enhancement, they could have easily added weather effects in there too as one of those revisions.
Back in the day that wasn't the issue at all, Melissa Bianco has had this stance for years now concerning weather in CoX. Back when they began doing the zone revisions to places like "Faultline" she was asked about adding in weather effects then. She said it was easy enough to do, but she personally thought if it was going to be in-game it should have an effect on gamplay, like bad weather making flight more difficult and so on.
The funny thing is they've recently released Going Rogue that updated the visual look to the game for no perceivable gameplay enhancement, they could have easily added weather effects in there too as one of those revisions.
Personally, I think they should work out a deal with Cryptic at some point to trade tech, since you could probably port certain tech like this between the two games quite easily.
Maybe weather from Champs for the login screen fixes and pet puppeteering or something. Or maybe a flatout exchange of artist assets, if such a thing could be bartered.
Y'Know, give us thirty hairstyles we developed for CoX rigged for our models and retextured to our new specs and we'll give you weather effects.
Comments
if they can add something cool that takes a few days work then why not. if its cool but takes a month of solid devs time just so we get something people wont use or see that much of then no probably not.
but in general im for cool things. sector space revamp in a way is nothing more than 'cool'. it does nothing to the game but every single person wants it, and has so far loved in on tribble. that was totally worth it because it improves the game, even though its nothing more than a visual improvement.
To say "We're not adding things just because they're cool" means you're not adding things like new costumes or badges, because they make no impact on gameplay. They might as well tell the truth; that they don't want to spend the time, money and effort working on something like that, not that they don't want cool stuff.
(On a side note, CoX would be very cool with weather related buffs/debuffs. Like, a flight speed debuff in high winds, or a ranged accuracy effect in the rain. Things like that.)
To me it really depends. Theres always the asthetic purpose for anything. Like the Imperial Class. I don't like it, but I see it more and more these days. The sole purpose of it being there is "because it's cool"
I think new mechanics should take priority over the things that are just cool though.
Want vs Function vs Game Tech vs Development Cost
Seems to be the "Big 4" i notice when any game talks about adding stuff.
Personally, I think you can prioritize coolness versus functionality but there are definitely functional improvements so minor that you'd have gotten a better response out of something cool.
You also have to consider the implementations of the engine.
CoH was traditionally a resource hog and it's big selling point these days is that it's an open, persistent world with low system requirements. So it's based around functionality and social interaction, to the expense of coolness. Which, frankly, Warcraft is the epitome of; it will run to close to the full extent of its beauty on any system and is an open world game.
Part of the reason a game like STO is sharded is because they decided to base it around coolness. Wouldn't it be cool if everyone had four pets? Wouldn't it be cool if we had fancy lighting effects?
The Cryptic hallmark is doing things because they're cool. There are two overriding questions behind everything Cryptic does: Is it fun? Is it cool? They'll tend to throw anything else on the backburner to satisfy these two points and their updates are generally based around these two points, which is why they're working on their fifth casual online game now and have never fostered a complete raiding climate. Champions is the closest they got to that... and it's simultaneously not enough of a raiding game for the hardcores and Cryptic's least popular game (I know some people who wouldn't play it because it had too much meaningful loot/gear progression for them).
Paragon seems to subscribe more to the Blizzard model of basing the game on interaction and functionality... and then you have companies further in that direction like CCP who have games that are almost completely functionality.
Function is important but I'd honestly sacrifice raiding and 1v1 PvP balance for more costumes, weekly missions, etc.
like, for example, adding a Firework Emote, just because its cool, is fine.
However, adding the enterprise J just because it's cool.... Not fine.....
That is my opinion. If it doesn't mess something up, I am fine with 'just because it's cool."
Love the planetary environments encountered in STO at any rate, Always something to look at, and that's pretty cool.
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Back in the day that wasn't the issue at all, Melissa Bianco has had this stance for years now concerning weather in CoX. Back when they began doing the zone revisions to places like "Faultline" she was asked about adding in weather effects then. She said it was easy enough to do, but she personally thought if it was going to be in-game it should have an effect on gamplay, like bad weather making flight more difficult and so on.
The funny thing is they've recently released Going Rogue that updated the visual look to the game for no perceivable gameplay enhancement, they could have easily added weather effects in there too as one of those revisions.
Personally, I think they should work out a deal with Cryptic at some point to trade tech, since you could probably port certain tech like this between the two games quite easily.
Maybe weather from Champs for the login screen fixes and pet puppeteering or something. Or maybe a flatout exchange of artist assets, if such a thing could be bartered.
Y'Know, give us thirty hairstyles we developed for CoX rigged for our models and retextured to our new specs and we'll give you weather effects.